This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473551510
Version 1.0
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Wartime Brides Copyright © Jeannie Johnson writing as Lizzie Lane 2002
First published in the UK in 2002 as The Rest of Our Lives by Orion
A Wartime Wife Copyright © Jeannie Johnson writing as Lizzie Lane 2006
First published in the UK in 2006 as Loving Enemies by Severn House Publishers Ltd.
A Wartime Family Copyright © Jeannie Johnson writing as Lizzie Lane 2007
First published in the UK in 2007 as Secret Sins by Severn House Publishers Ltd.
Lizzie Lane has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Ebury Press in 2017
www.penguin.co.uk
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Coronation Wives
A Christmas Wish
The Soldier’s Valentine (digital novella)
“If at all possible, send or take your household animals into the country in advance of an emergency. If you cannot place them in the care of neighbours, it really is kindest to have them destroyed.”
Joanna Ryan’s father has gone off to war, leaving her in the care of her step-mother, a woman more concerned with having a good time than being any sort of parent to her.
But then she finds a puppy, left for dead, and Joanna’s becomes determined to save him, sharing her meagre rations with him. But, in a time of war, pets are only seen as an unnecessary burden and she is forced to hide her new friend, Harry from her step-mother and the authorities. With bombs falling over Bristol and with the prospect of evacuation on the horizon can they keep stay together and keep each other safe?
Available from Ebury Press
Twins Ruby and Mary Sweet help their widowed father out when they can. Mary loves baking and has no intention of leaving their small Gloucestershire village, while Ruby dreams of life in London.
When it comes, war threatens change for the whole Sweet family, with brother Charlie off to serve and cousin Frances facing evacuation. But there will be opportunities too, as the twins’ baking talent catches the attention of the Ministry of Food…
Available from Ebury Press
Lydia is in training to be a nurse when she first meets Robert and, despite the differences in their class and background, they fall head over heels for one another.
Robert is the nephew of a Lord, and Lydia a mere doctor’s daughter – and a German doctor at that. While her parentage is no hindrance to their relationship in peacetime, when war is declared Robert’s family makes it clear they no longer approve of the match.
With no means of contacting Robert on the Western Front, Lydia volunteers herself, joining the Red Cross. But her love affair with Robert has had more than one consequence…
Available from Ebury Press
To my mother and all those of her generation who rebuilt their lives and told me their stories
Edna stared. It was sitting there on the hallstand between a tweed jacket and a beige trench mac. A parcel – a third parcel – had arrived!
The sender’s address was printed in the top left-hand corner, name, street and town. Finally, it read Mississippi, USA.
‘Don’t even think about opening it!’
Her mother’s voice pierced as sharply as the pearl-ended pin she was presently stabbing into her hat.
‘I wasn’t,’ Edna lied. She felt a hot flush creeping over her cheeks. ‘I was just thinking.’
The sharp-featured Ethel Burbage rounded on her daughter and wagged a bony finger threateningly before Edna’s eyes. ‘Well, stop thinking about what’s past, my girl, and think about your future. THAT’s all that matters!’
She went back to adjusting her hat. ‘What time did you say Colin was arriving?’
The question had already been asked last night over Spam and mash and this morning over a thick slice of bread fried in beef dripping. Edna swallowed a wave of revulsion at the memory of the grease congealing on her tongue. The war might be over but rationing certainly was not.
‘The train pulls in at twelve,’ she repeated for the third time.
She could see it in her mind’s eye. Full of steam. Full of men. And herself standing on a smoke-filled platform waiting for Colin.
As she fastened her coat buttons, the clustered stones in her engagement ring blinked up at her. Three years since he’d slipped it on her finger and she had promised to wait for him. Today she must present herself at the station, smile, and pretend to be the same girl who had seen her garrulous, dependable fiancé off on that other train that had taken him to his ship and ultimately to the Far East.
‘Better catch the eleven o’clock bus then. I did hear something about an unexploded bomb being found in Victoria Street. Poor old Bristol.’ Her mother’s tone softened for the briefest of moments. ‘The heart’s been torn out of the old place.’
Edna reached for her woollen gloves. I want time to roll back like the lid on a tin of sardines, she thought and sighed heavily. That was the trouble with time. Nothing had the power to roll back the weeks, the months and the year or so that had changed her life. All she had to remind her of that time was the arrival of these parcels, the third of which her mother loomed over like a guard dog over a fallen villain. Only she was that villain, the one who had done wrong.
‘He didn’t say much about his injuries in his letters,’ Edna blurted suddenly.
Her mother tilted her hat a little more to the left and pushed it there firmly. ‘Then they can’t be very bad, can they? Nerves I expect. Shell shock they used to call it in the Great War. Give him my regards, won’t you.’
‘I will.’ Edna sighed meaningfully in the vain hope it would convey to her mother exactly how she felt. ‘But I certainly don’t know what else to say to him.’
‘There’s no need to tell him anything.’
Edna’s frail hope vanished. ‘I suppose not.’
She made a meal of pulling on her gloves, as if the task required far more concentration than it needed. In her mind she rehearsed what she would say, edited the first words, rehearsed them again, then altered them some more. What if her tongue refused to lie? I had an affair with an American GI and I had a baby. She imagined the look of shock that would greet this announcement.
‘There’s no suppose about it,’ her mother snapped, at the same time briskly brushing whatever specks, imaginary or otherwise, had dared to settle on the square-rigged shoulders of her everyday grey coat with the astrakhan collar. ‘Don’t even think about telling Colin. Poor lamb. After all he’s been through.’
Edna nodded guiltily. As her mother never tired of reminding her, she had let her down. Only the fact that her liaison had happened at a distance saved her reputation. She’d been in the ATS manning the searchlights on the outskirts of Liverpool. Jim had bumped into her – literally – at some time before going on duty in the early hours of the morning when the blackout was at its worst. They’d become friends. She’d told him about Colin. He’d told her about the girl he’d left behind. They’d fallen into silence, the way people do when they suddenly realise they’re attracted to each other. They were feeling the same way, thinking the same things. They were two lonely people, he far from home, she a shy girl thrust into a wartime job that she hated from the depths of her soul. They both longed for the war to be over and, in the meantime, they became more than friends. She’d tried to explain, but her mother had been mortified. During the last months of her pregnancy Edna had stayed with an aunt in North Somerset, just a short ambulance ride to a cottage hospital where she had been parted from her baby. For the sake of appearances it was two weeks or so before she came home.
Ethel’s no-nonsense heels tapped on red and brown linoleum then softened as they reached the front door. The parcel was gripped tightly beneath her arm.
‘I’ll get this to Mrs Grey,’ she said, ‘and she’ll get it to the orphanage. Thankfully she knows when to keep her mouth shut. But mark you, I’m going to write to him when I get back and tell him not to send things here any more. He can send direct to the orphanage or to Mrs Grey if he wants, but not here.’ She held up a warning finger. ‘But on no account are you to write to him. Understand?’
Edna nodded silently, her eyes averted now from the offending sight of the parcel and all the memories it resurrected.
Tears had threatened all morning. Only being occupied with buttering bread and laying out the table for Colin’s welcome home party round at his mother’s house had helped keep them at bay. His family, of course, knew nothing of her fall from grace. Everyone had been told she’d been off doing war work. But now she had to face him and pretend nothing had changed. It wasn’t going to be easy.
Her mother forced a strained smile. ‘Well, go and get yourself looking nice for Colin. He is home from fighting a war you know.’
The door slammed and Edna was alone.
‘Does daddy know we’re going to meet him at the station?’ asked Janet Hennessey-White, who was nearly fourteen and considered herself almost a woman and reckoned she would be once the freckles that covered her nose had melted away.
‘No, darling. He doesn’t.’ Eyes bright, lips twitching with an excited smile that narrowed and broadened dependent on what she was thinking, Janet’s mother, Charlotte, tried to stop her hands from shaking as she tidied her hair and arranged her hat. She couldn’t stop chattering, her voice bubbling with girlish excitement. ‘It was purely by chance that his old CO rang to wish him good luck and then realised he’d got the wrong day. He was going to surprise us, now we’re going to surprise him.’
‘What’s a CO?’ asked Janet.
‘Commanding Officer, stupid,’ snapped her younger brother Geoffrey who was eleven. He had followed the war with great enthusiasm and now seemed instilled with all the knowledge of any armchair general four times his age. ‘I told my friends that my dad was an officer and that’s why it took him so long to come home. He had responsibilities I said. That’s why he wasn’t around and their daddies were.’ He frowned threateningly. ‘I’ll show them!’
Janet held her head saucily to one side. ‘But they didn’t believe you because THEY’RE stupid and YOU’RE too stupid to realise they are!’
Geoffrey’s dark blue eyes sparked with anger.
‘Destroy!’ he shouted.
Janet yelled as the toy dive-bomber swept down the length of his arm. One wing of the wooden toy tangled in his sister’s hair.
‘Geoffrey!’ Charlotte threw him a warning look though her voice remained calm. ‘Please behave yourself, darling.’
‘Mother! Tell him!’ shrieked Janet.
Belief that the day could only be perfect flew into fragments. Charlotte took hold of her son by the shoulders and pulled him towards her. Janet aimed a punch but missed.
‘Janet! Don’t do that!’ cried Charlotte, hating the fact that she had to shout and aggrieved that her children could still argue on such a special day.
After untangling the toy plane from her daughter’s hair, she tossed it into a brown moquette armchair – David’s favourite chair as a matter of fact. Soon he’d be there again, smoking his pipe just as he used to. The thought was fleeting but caused a smile to flutter across her lips.
Geoffrey struggled. Charlotte held him tight. ‘Let me straighten your tie.’
‘It won’t straighten,’ he said attempting to step away from her ministrations but being promptly tugged back again.
‘Scruffy and crooked suits you,’ said a triumphant Janet.
‘It won’t take a moment,’ said Charlotte. ‘And after that you can pull your socks up so that they’re both level.’ She glanced down. ‘But wash your knees first.’
‘I have!’
‘Not well enough.’
‘He’s too weak to turn the taps on,’ crowed Janet.
Her mother wagged a warning finger. ‘Janet!’
‘He hates washing,’ said Janet hunching her shoulders as she swung away. ‘I need the lavatory,’ she said suddenly.
‘But you’ve already …’ Charlotte began. Then a knowing smile came to her face as she watched her daughter skip off into the hall and up the stairs to the bathroom. The door slammed overhead. And that’s the bolt going across, thought Charlotte.
Suddenly she was filled with a mix of trepidation and wonder. Janet was growing up, but not enough for the tube of bright red lipstick Charlotte had found hidden behind the medicine bottles and had thrown away. Probably given to her by some spotty-faced GI, she thought wryly. God, how quickly children were growing up nowadays, thanks to the war. But thank God it was over. Perhaps things would now get back to normal – whatever that was. It was hard to remember what was normal before 1939. The children had been smaller, David had been home, and there was enough of everything if you had the money to pay for it. No rationing! What a luxurious thought!
‘Ouch!’ said Geoffrey. ‘You’re strangling me.’
‘Sorry,’ said Charlotte and proceeded to loosen the tie, just as she used to do for David when she had inadvertently slipped into a daydream.
As she patted the tie flat and straightened Geoffrey’s shirt collar, she glanced at the pre-war photographs sitting on top of the piano. Shots of the family at the seaside, the children on their first bikes, Janet on a pony, the children as babies. Eventually her gaze rested on her wedding photograph. She smiled sadly. So long ago. A different world. Then she looked at the photograph of David in his army captain’s uniform, taken before he departed for ‘somewhere in Europe’. He’d looked so different, so distinguished, yet he’d still been the same man beneath. She didn’t doubt that he still was, but she had heard sad stories since working at the Marriage Advisory Centre. Some men had been drastically changed by war. But not David, she thought. Too strong. Too level-headed.
‘Come on Geoffrey,’ she said brightly, as the sound of Janet’s footsteps dragged down from one stair tread to another. ‘Let’s go and meet your father. And remember,’ she said, her voice taking on a more serious tone as Janet re-entered the room, ‘he’s been through a lot, so if he doesn’t seem like his old self at first, don’t worry. He soon will be.’
‘Of course he will,’ said a confident Janet, unable to contemplate him being anything other than the daddy she remembered, willing to give her anything it was in his power to give – perhaps even lipstick, she thought hopefully.
Charlotte noticed her hands were shaking again as she picked up her kid gloves, which were finely made and honeycomb yellow. ‘Most people are bound to be affected by war. We certainly were.’
‘He won’t be. He’s an officer,’ said Geoffrey as if that explained everything.
Polly always took great care to look smart. Her preference for wearing black and white certainly helped, and it went so well with her blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
Gavin, her Canadian sweetheart, had said it was the first thing he’d noticed about her. He’d also said he liked girls who were slim and had boyish bottoms and feminine bosoms. And he’d also said he loved her and that he would marry her and they would leave for Canada together once the war was over. Another train was due at Temple Meads railway station at noon. This time he just might be on it.
She took out her powder compact to check whether she needed a touch more lipstick. If Gavin did arrive on the train she wanted to look her best. So much depended on it. Going to Canada meant escaping rationing, bombsites, and the dreary poverty she’d known most of her life. The idea of living in Canada or the USA had filled her mind ever since the friendly invasion of the early war years. They were so different and glamorous, so representative of everything she’d ever adored on the movie screen. She’d adopted the word ‘movies’ since the Yanks had arrived. Discontentment with her own lot had set in and she’d made a vow that she would marry a man in uniform, but not one from her own country. The British Isles had been invaded by big men from a big country and nothing would ever be the same again.
She closed her eyes and said a swift and selfish prayer. ‘Please God let him be on this train. If he’s not, he’s had his chips!’ She opened her eyes, then had a second thought and closed them again. ‘And don’t expect me to be responsible for my actions. I’ll be downright irresponsible in future if you don’t help me now!’
Carrying her peep-toe suede shoes under one arm and her clutch bag under the other, she crept on stockinged feet over dull brown linoleum. First open the inner door. The deep blue and ruby-red glass of its upper half threw pools of colour onto the varnished walls dull as dried out shoe polish. Despite her being careful the door creaked on its hinges.
Polly stopped and took a deep breath. Even though she’d set her mind on going to the station, she still had a twinge of guilt about leaving without telling Aunty Meg. She glanced down the passage to the door that opened onto what remained of the back of the house. Unlike the rest of the street, Aunty Meg’s house only had two bedrooms. The third bedroom had been blown off by the blast from a bomb in an air raid. ‘No sense of direction,’ Aunty Meg had shouted skywards at the time. She was right, of course. The bombers had been aiming at the goods trains that sat in the shunting yards beyond the brick wall at the end of the back garden. Garden was really too grand a name for something that was little more than a yard. Potatoes and cabbages grew weakly through the stony soil and Christmas poultry clucked impatiently in a makeshift coop.
She sucked in her breath as her feet met the cold lino. Pausing she bent down and slid her feet into her black suede court shoes. So far, so good. But her luck didn’t last.
Aunty Meg came in from the scullery just as she reached for the front door. Polly blinked guiltily.
Meg shook her head and tutted like she might at a small child. ‘I take it you’re meeting the twelve o’clock train.’
Polly tightened her grip on the door catch. Her eyes met those of her aunt. ‘Don’t tell me not to go,’ she said with a determined jutting of her chin. ‘I have to see if he’s on it, for Carol’s sake as much as for mine. He might be, he just might be. I meant to ask you to look after Carol until I get back, honest I did. You will do that, won’t you?’
Meg’s jaw stiffened. For the briefest of moments Polly thought her aunt was going to shout at her, tell her she was making herself look cheap and she should have more pride. Perhaps she should. But she couldn’t ignore the desire that gnawed inside her. She had a dream to pursue and nothing would shake her from her path.
‘You could have asked before sneaking out,’ snapped Meg. She tucked her hands behind her apron and under her breasts. A formidable stance, but Polly wasn’t fooled. Meg was soft hearted. The round-bodied, caring woman that Polly had lived with since her parents’ death sighed resignedly and lowered her eyes. There was no doubt in her mind that Gavin wasn’t coming back. He’d either got killed or had flown straight back to Canada, but she couldn’t condemn Polly for hoping.
‘Get out of it,’ growled Meg, ‘before I change me mind.’
‘Thanks.’ With a jaunty air that she always got on a day when a troop train was due, Polly was off.
Meg stared at the closed door before wiping her eyes with the blue gingham apron that was almost a dress because it crossed over her breasts and tied at the back. How many trains had Polly met in the hope, a fainter hope now after twelve months, that her Canadian would be on it? How many more would she still meet until she finally gave up and admitted to herself that she would remain unwed and her child fatherless?
Men, even nice young men like Gavin, a squadron leader at only twenty-five years old, did foolish things before they went overseas to do even more foolish things. Who was to know he didn’t have a family already back home in Alberta or Manitoba or wherever it was? All over the country, men from overseas were being repatriated. No questions would be asked when they got home as to whether they’d left any dependents behind.
The sound of crying drifted in from the backyard where Carol was lying in a pre-war pram that had a deep body and small wheels. Meg would have liked a new one for the baby, but Polly had told her there was a waiting list. Besides, married women got priority, or at least it seemed that way.
Time for Carol’s feed, thought Meg with a sigh, and turned back to the scullery door, dragging her slippered feet over the cold floor and wishing she could do more than she’d already done for her niece. If only Polly’s parents were still alive. She especially missed her own sister, Marian. John, Polly’s father, had died of TB and Marian had been in an air raid shelter at the aircraft factory where she’d worked which had taken a direct hit. She had been another casualty of war. But, Meg thought with a sigh, there were a lot of casualties in war, and not all of them were left dead or injured, just hurting.
The minute hand on the station clock that hung over platform nine was just approaching five minutes to twelve. The smell of soot mixed with the dampness of steam exhaled from engines called Bristol Castle, Truro Castle, or any other castle with West Country connections. The grey, pungent clouds rose only as far as the iron beams, where they hung like a brewing storm before gradually escaping into the sharp blue beyond.
Temple Meads Railway Station was showing signs of wear. Wartime neglect had left paint peeling like crisp skin and, although signs bearing the station’s name were being re-erected after their long absence during hostilities, they looked dull and tired as though they’d just been roused from a long, dust-laden sleep.
Already the platform was crowded with people. The waiting families were herded like cattle behind barriers by railway personnel who informed them they had to stay there until the train came in. A few grumbled. After two, three, even four years, they still had to follow orders.
Privations aside, there was bright expectancy lighting the faces of most of those waiting though, like the station, many of them looked shabby unless their means went beyond wartime clothing coupons or they’d acquired friends in the US Army.
Charlotte Hennessey-White was one of those whose clothes, although pre-war, were of a quality made to last. They had been bought with David’s encouragement on the day after war broke out. They’d driven to Castle Street in the centre of Bristol, parked just across from the Dutch House, a fine old seventeenth-century black and white timbered building whose upper storeys hung over the street like a benevolent frown. Despite some people insisting that the war would be over by Christmas, David had not been convinced. He had been generous, purchasing clothes for her and the children. She felt close to tears as she remembered asking him why he wasn’t buying clothes for himself. With a wry smile he had answered, ‘Because the government will be supplying me with all I need for the duration.’
Bittersweet as it was, she cherished the memory of that day. And memory was all it was now. Castle Street was no more and the Dutch House that had survived three centuries and Edwardian demolition plans to widen the road was gone. Only ash and rubble remained.
David had been right about the length of the war and he’d been right about being needed. As a doctor he was called up almost immediately.
She parked the car, her hands trembling with excitement so that she was barely able to lock the door once she had unloaded Janet and Geoffrey. It was as though there were no bones in her fingers or as if they had minds of their own.
David was coming home! David was coming home!
The words were like the lyrics of a song running through her head, the music spilling into her fingers, making her drop the keys. And all because David was coming home! It was like being eighteen all over again and meeting him for the first time. But it’s only been two years since you last saw him, she told herself. Just two years!
She paused, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. What could she say? What would he say? Would he have changed that much since his last leave? He had seemed a little strained back then compared with pre-war, but was she really remembering how he had been? It was difficult to say. Nineteen thirty-nine seemed so long ago. September had been a russet-red season when they had walked and talked more than they had for a long while. They’d snatched moments to discuss with nervous excitement what might happen, how the gas masks smelled of something lately dead and how small the Anderson shelters seemed. But none of it had been as important as just touching and talking. It seemed as if each minute was snatched in lieu of a future when they would be apart, perhaps for ever. Suddenly Charlotte was overwhelmed with a great feeling of relief. He’d been one of the lucky ones. Her legs felt weak. Solid objects in the world around her seemed to wobble and blur around the edges. She closed her eyes and leaned against the car.
‘Thank you God,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank God he’s safe.’
Her moment of gratitude was swiftly shattered.
‘Noooo!’ Geoffrey, then a scream of car tyres.
Her eyes snapped open and she turned sharply.
‘Geoffrey!’
He was standing at the kerb, one foot in the gutter. The wooden aeroplane was wedged under the front wheel of a gleaming Bentley and the driver was looking peeved rather than upset.
‘Let me get it,’ she heard someone say. ‘There. It’s not broken.’ The young woman who had spoken and now handed Geoffrey back his toy looked vaguely familiar.
‘Geoffrey!’ Charlotte ran to him, grabbed his shoulders and angrily spun him round to face her. But her ire was short lived, overwhelmed by excitement and anxiety. Please. Don’t spoil this very special day.
She took a deep breath. ‘Geoffrey!’ Gently she held him by the shoulders and manoeuvred him around until he faced the young woman. ‘What do you say to this kind young lady?’
‘Thank you,’ Geoffrey muttered sheepishly, eyes downcast and his chin resting on his tie.
‘I’m sorry, but today is a day for us all to remember,’ Charlotte said apologetically, aware of the excitement in her voice but curiously unable to control it. ‘Geoffrey’s not usually so careless. It’s just that his father’s coming home today. I think all three of us are far too excited.’
‘I suppose you are, ma’am,’ said the young woman, already moving away as the unmistakable discomfort of class deference came to her eyes.
Charlotte immediately felt that pang of regret she always did at times like these, that yearning to reach out and explain that she was no different from her. Show me who you are without fear or shame, she wanted to say. She had seen that look on the faces of people she’d helped in the Marriage Advisory Centre she’d been working in during the last two years. Before that it had been the WRVS. Marriage guidance had been available before the war but had been promptly disbanded on its outbreak. Then, as men went fighting overseas and long periods of separation and loneliness ensued, the service was rapidly re-formed. Charlotte found she was a natural at giving help and advice.
She offered her hand, judging that the young woman would consider it impolite not to take it. ‘My name’s Charlotte Hennessey-White,’ she said. ‘How do you do?’
‘Edna Burbage,’ answered the young woman.
Charlotte held on to her hand a little longer and said, ‘He’s very fond of that aeroplane you know. I got it locally from a man who serves on an aircraft carrier. Apparently he made it in the lull between battles.’ I’m prattling, she thought and, although she wanted to continue and tell Edna that she was more excited than the children that her husband was coming home, she was an adult and was therefore expected to control herself.
To her surprise, Edna’s gaze went straight to the little plane as if it were very familiar to her, but she had only just been reminded of it.
‘I got it in Nutgrove Avenue near Victoria Park,’ Charlotte went on.
Edna smiled a little pensively. ‘I know. I saw you there. The man that made it is my fiancé. I was round visiting his mother.’
‘Well,’ said Charlotte in a very slow and thoughtful manner, ‘that is a very strange coincidence.’
Edna frowned then smiled. ‘He’s coming home on the midday train. His name’s Colin Smith.’
‘That’s the man!’ said Charlotte, her pent-up excitement endowing the exclamation with more enthusiasm than it deserved. ‘Look,’ she went on, determined to overcome Edna’s initial discomfort. ‘Let me buy you a cup of tea. You did save my son’s answer to the Luftwaffe.’
Edna hesitated, eyes shyly downcast. ‘Well, I didn’t really do anything.’
‘But we could talk about Geoffrey’s Christmas present for this year. I dare say your fiancé – Colin did you say? – must have plans to continue with his talent.’
Edna smiled. ‘I don’t know, but it is a possibility.’
Charlotte, pleased with herself for making such a useful suggestion, added, ‘I do hope you don’t mind me saying, but you should do that more often.’
Edna attempted to blink away her confusion. Her cheeks reddened.
‘Smiling,’ Charlotte explained. ‘The war’s over. You can do a lot more smiling from now on.’
She meant it. In that small moment when Edna had smiled, her brown eyes sparkled and her nut-brown hair seemed streaked with the richer tones of French brandy. Edna had problems, Charlotte thought, and made a mental note to offer her help if required. Offering help to other people came naturally. Taking advice herself was something she rarely had to do.
They walked into the station and got their platform tickets together, Charlotte bubbling with excitement, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed, and Edna, apprehensive, her hands shoved deeply into the oversized patch pockets of her plaid, three-quarter-length coat. The children chattered and squabbled at their sides and the two women exchanged looks of understanding that held the seeds of friendship.
‘I wish I could be as calm as you about all this,’ said Charlotte. ‘I mean, a woman of my age feeling like a silly sixteen-year-old …’
Her voice trailed off. Crackling and buzzing came from overhead, a sure sign that something was about to be announced over the loudspeaker system.
‘The train’s late,’ said Edna before the station announcer had the chance to say anything.
Sure enough they had a thirty-minute wait before the train was expected. Frozen points according to the information crackling from the overhead speakers.
‘I can believe it,’ said Charlotte wrapping her fur a little closer around herself. Then, seeing Edna’s envious look, she wished she’d worn something less ostentatious.
‘Would you like that cup of tea?’ Edna asked, taking up Charlotte’s earlier suggestion.
Charlotte was just about to say that she would pay before realising that could hurt Edna’s pride. ‘I could certainly do with one,’ she said with a smile.
The buffet was crowded but they managed to squeeze into a set of rickety wooden chairs that surrounded a table by the window. Smears of whitewash and the remains of sticky tape on the panes testified to the fact that it hadn’t been that long since a blackout was in force and shattered glass from exploding bombs was a real danger. But at least they were in the warm. Despite it being a fine, dry day and the sky a summer blue, the air was raw with the crispness of December.
Cream distemper was flaking from the walls and brown painted doors were scuffed and scratched from thousands of service boots and mountains of kit bags. Despite the drab neglect, someone had made an effort to be seasonal. Faded paper chains straggled across the ceiling, their tattiness relieved here and there by a single sliver of tinsel. Obviously the decorations were of pre-war vintage but the very fact they were there at all heralded the hope that things were returning to normal.
Tea was served in big, ugly cups that had chips around the rim. The liquid itself was weak but palatable, although the woman in charge of the sugar allotted only one spoonful per person.
The children stayed outside, squashed against the barriers, sniffing the soot-laden air, and watching the giant, black engines steaming in and out of the station.
Charlotte took a sip of tea then looked out of the greasy window.
‘Peace,’ she said plaintively. ‘Is it possible that we’ve got so used to war that we won’t be able to handle peace?’
‘My mother said it’s a new beginning,’ said Edna, her gaze following Charlotte’s to the smoky world outside the buffet room. ‘She said the war made us do things we wouldn’t have ever dreamed of doing before. It made the world unreal.’ She blushed, wishing she hadn’t said it. Her guilt showed too easily.
Charlotte turned to look at her. ‘Do you believe that it’s a new beginning?’
Edna looked nervously down into her cup. ‘I don’t know. It might be for us, but I don’t know how the men will view it. They must have got used to living dangerously, giving orders and taking orders and all that.’
Charlotte felt for her. She shook her head. ‘But how wonderful not to take orders, not to have to duck flying bullets and explosions and goodness knows what else.’
‘It’s the most thrilling time so I’ve heard, that moment when you think you are about to die,’ said Edna.
‘I’ve heard that too,’ said Charlotte recalling the words of Doctor Julian Sands, a psychiatrist at the hospital. On one or two occasions she had turned to him for advice when dealing with some of the more difficult relationships resulting from the war. ‘Some get such a thrill from being that close to death that they can’t help courting it, daring it to try them again. The adrenalin flows. It becomes like a drug. They have to have it. They have to risk their lives, but they also risk the lives of others in the process. Some view them as heroes. Others as maniacs.’
‘Hello again,’ said the ticket inspector as Polly showed him her platform ticket. ‘Definitely on this train, is he?’
‘That’s what it said in his letter,’ she lied, her smile broad enough to convince anyone that she was telling the truth. ‘I don’t suppose the train is on time?’
‘Oh ye of little faith!’ said the beaming inspector, who’d been called back in from retirement to fill this post back in nineteen forty-one but was likely to be put out to pasture again now that a brace of more able-bodied men were coming home. And thank God for that!
‘Trust to the Lord and the railways,’ said the ticket inspector.
‘Blasphemy!’ snapped the woman standing immediately behind Polly’s right shoulder.
Polly exchanged a quick smile with the inspector before moving to the platform where she would wind her way through the crowds waiting at the barrier until the train came. Once it had come, she would walk up and down looking for the familiar uniform that represented a dream she was desperate to fulfil.
Gavin had not been her first Canadian airman. There had been Pierre before him. His colleagues had called him Snowshoe because he was from some small place in the Rockies and knew how to trap and fish in the Canadian wilderness. He had been a tailgunner on a bomber that had been saddled, like a lot of others, with the job of bombing the enemy without the benefit of fighter protection. He’d told her he would marry her when he got back from his last mission.
Even now, after falling in love with Gavin, she could still remember how dry her mouth had been that day as she waited for Pierre to return. She had wanted to burst with happiness because he was so big and strong and was going to take her to a new place that was bigger than Europe and untouched by war. With mounting tension she had watched as his plane banked over the airfield, last of a force of twenty-one, not all of which had come back. But his plane had. With mounting excitement she had watched it land, then suddenly spotted the holes in its wings, bits of metal hanging like ripped skin from its main body.
As the plane swerved its tail round to face her, she saw the place where the tailgunner’s turret should be. Instead of the usual bubble of glass there was nothing except a gaping hole. It was as though someone had drawn a tooth and made a mess of it. Her heartbeat had seemed to slow to a monosyllabic dirge. Snowshoe was gone and it hurt like hell. So she partied and threw herself into being the bubbliest blonde, the one with the loudest laugh, the most raucous singing voice. Gather ye rosebuds … But in her case it was men she had gathered and she didn’t care who knew it. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her because life was for living and young men were dying and who knew if she mightn’t die too. So what was the point of being a little Miss Goody Two Shoes and waiting for the bomb to drop on her? Besides, she still had her dream to achieve.
She thought she’d found her dream when she met Al Schumacher. He was coarsely built with hands like shovels and pink cheeks.
‘I farm with my folks,’ he’d told her. ‘In Kansas.’
‘Is that in Canada?’ she’d asked him.
‘No way!’ He’d sounded insulted. ‘It’s in the good ole US of A!’
Good enough, she’d thought, and they’d got on really well and got really close and, eventually, he’d asked her to marry him and she’d said yes. He’d even given her a brass ring as temporary confirmation that she was engaged to him. As a warm glow spread over her, he had slid it onto the third finger of her right hand. That night under cover of the blackout, she had felt the hairs of his chest against hers, his hands exploring her body as he mumbled sweet words in her ear. He’d also told her how it would be in Kansas and how his mother would be pleased to see he’d married a girl from the old country. ‘Well, almost the old country,’ he’d added. ‘It’s Europe, ain’t it? What’s in a name?’
She hadn’t bothered to enquire further because his bulk was slamming the breath out of her and he was breathing heavily in her ear. Even if she got pregnant it wouldn’t matter because Al was going to marry her and she was going to live in Kansas.
But Al got shot down. One of his friends swore he saw his parachute open. Another wasn’t so sure.
Her dream stayed with her, but it was six months before she got serious again. That was when she’d met Gavin.
Her legs were getting cold so she rubbed one against the other in an effort to keep her circulation going. She glanced at the clock then looked towards the end of the platform, willing the train to arrive and for Gavin to be on it.
Suddenly a shout went up. ‘The train’s coming! The train’s coming!’
An engine whistle screamed and a cloud of smoke appeared just beyond the link that crossed over the bridge which, in turn, crossed the river.
Under pressure from the pushing crowd, the barriers were hastily removed. People surged like a wind-driven tide towards the edge of the platform, expectant, excited, and willing to risk falling onto the rails rather than lose their place at the front of the milling throng.
‘Keep back! Keep back!’
The shouts of the railway guards and inspectors fell on deaf ears. They were like Canute before the tide, only this sea of people was far more determined than the North Sea could ever be. The winds of war had at last blown themselves out and people were tired, glad it was over, and hopeful for the future.
Piles of khaki, navy and airforce-blue uniforms, interspersed with the grey pinstripe of demobilisation suits, hung from carriage windows and doors, jostled by more men behind them jammed into the packed carriages.
As the train slowed, the men’s eyes searched the crowds of turbans, feathered hats, and hair curled especially for the occasion with the aid of heated irons and water reinforced with a precious spoonful of sugar.
Eager hands like tentacles sought the smooth metal of handles, doors swung open, and men piled out onto the platforms to outstretched arms welcoming them home. The noise was thunderous, far too powerful to be drowned out by the crackling loudspeaker that attempted to announce the train’s arrival.
Polly, her eyes searching the windows as the men burst out from gaping doors, started to walk briskly along the edge of the platform, uncaring that she pushed embracing couples aside, her tears blinding her to how they might be feeling, how much they might have been missing each other.
‘Gavin! Do you know Gavin?’ she said, grabbing what she recognised as a shoulder adorned with the insignia of the Royal Canadian Airforce. The surprised-looking Canadian shook his head briefly before being engulfed by a pair of feminine arms clothed in the sleeves of a leopard-skin jacket.
Polly pushed on determinedly, oblivious to bumps from shoving arms, angry glares and shouts of protest.
She tried to gain more height by jumping in an effort to look over the heads of the crowd just in case she had missed him. People were like a sea around her, pushing, shoving. Shouts of recognition eddied around her from those on the platform, from those on the train.
There were other shouts too.
‘Stop pushing!’ she heard someone shout.
‘The handle’s stuck!’
‘Watch it!’ shouted someone else.
The shouts were ignored. Although those in front told those behind not to push, the urge to get off the train and as far away from war as possible was too strong.
The door sprang open across her path. She screamed as the bottom part hit her solidly in the stomach sending her flying against the side of the carriage. One leg slid away from her and plugged the gap between the carriage and the platform. She felt her shoe slide off her foot.
‘My shoe! Where’s my bloody shoe!’
A bevy of voices commented on her plight. ‘Oh God!’
‘Is she all right?’
Faces, legs and uniforms formed a barrier around her. Hands reached to help her to her feet.
‘Make room,’ someone said in a commanding voice, ‘let me through. I’m a doctor.’
A tall shadow leaned over her. Its owner bent down and began examining her leg. There were definitely bruises, definitely abrasions. She winced as the helping arms pulled her clear of the gap. A numb burning circled her ankle.
Suddenly the crowds and those gathered round were just too much. ‘I’m all right,’ she said and looked back at the gap and her bare foot. She was still minus a shoe.
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said the man who claimed to be a doctor. ‘Can you move your ankle?’
She nodded at the top of his head as his cold fingers carefully manipulated where a rip in her stocking gave way to grazed flesh. ‘Yes,’ she said.
He straightened. She was surprised how tall he was. ‘Nothing broken, but I think it’s badly twisted.’
Polly looked down to the gap between the platform and the wooden step beneath the open door.
‘My shoe!’
‘Don’t you worry, luv. I’ll get it for you once the train’s moved out,’ said a young navy rating whose frizz of ginger hair stuck out like a halo from under the round hat he wore.
‘There!’ said the doctor, who wore the uniform of an army officer with the ease of someone used to being well groomed. ‘That’s the Navy for you, always at the ready. No wonder they’ve got a girl in every port. Good for you, son.’
The rating beamed. ‘Pleased to be of service to the young lady, sir,’ he added, perhaps a little tongue in cheek.
The doctor shook his head. ‘Not sir, son. Doctor will do.’ He spread his arms to either side of him, shrugged and smiled. ‘I opted to hang onto the uniform by virtue of the fact that it fitted me far better than the suit I was offered.’
‘I know what yer going to say,’ said the rating, his cheeks as pink and round as polished apples. ‘It was for an average man of five-feet-four with a thirty-eight-inch waist. Been there myself, sir.’
‘Forty-two-inch I shouldn’t wonder, judging by the way it kept sliding to my ankles,’ laughed the doctor. ‘We’ll be over in the buffet. Can you deliver it there?’
The rating saluted at the doctor and winked at Polly.
‘I don’t want no tea,’ Polly began. ‘I just want me shoe so I can do what I gotta do and go where I gotta go!’
‘I’ll thank you to listen to my good advice,’ said the doctor, his tone and the fact that he cupped her elbow in his hand and guided her towards the buffet leaving her in no doubt that he was used to giving orders and used to having them obeyed. ‘I also owe you free consultation at my surgery.’
Polly hobbled as she looked up at him. ‘Why’s that then?’
For a brief moment he looked sheepish. ‘My fault,’ he said brusquely. ‘I pushed open the door without looking.’
Once his apology was out, his chin was up, his head high. He’s like a hawk, she thought, with that hair swept back severely from his forehead, that straight nose, but most of all, the alert eyes that searched ahead and to either side of him.
Polly was just about to say that it was understandable. But she didn’t get another chance to say anything. The pressure from the mix of men and waiting relatives was too great to resist. It was like a river trying to filter into a drainpipe. Some of the men were in uniform and others already in demob suits, but all were thankful to have survived. They were eager to get home and get on with their lives and nothing was going to get in their way. She was pressed against the doctor, standing on one leg, her bare foot held slightly off the ground. One moment his arm was around her, the next it was gone. The press of bodies had eased.
‘Darling!’
There was a sudden flash of fur coat, expensive earrings. The woman wore a matching pillbox hat perched at a jaunty angle. Good stuff, thought Polly. Pre-war and bought in somewhere like Castle Street before it got blasted to hell.
A veil of stiff black net shaded the eyes that now closed in ecstasy. A tear rolled down one cheek, yet the red lips were smiling, teeth showing shiny white before he clamped his lips to hers and they clung together like magnets.
Two children glanced briefly at her but their interest was short lived. Smiling hesitantly, they eyed the man who now embraced their mother. He was obviously their father.
‘How I’ve missed you!’ the woman exclaimed, hugging him tightly and laying her head against his shoulder before turning to the children.
‘Children! Say welcome home to your father.’
Polly sensed he was as nervous as they were. He watched them silently as they stepped dutifully forward, paused, then threw their arms around him.
Family business, thought Polly as he clung to them, and started to ease away. She felt like an interloper and, although she only had one shoe, she preferred putting up with the coldness of the platform in order to get to the buffet as quickly as possible where the rating would return the missing one to her.
But she wasn’t forgotten. The doctor turned round, the look in his eyes similar to those she’d seen on a dozen service personnel when they spotted a ‘looker’ like her.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘We’ve still got to wait for your shoe.’
Frowning, his wife turned to him then to Polly. ‘Her shoe?’
‘Look, there ain’t no need to worry about me …’ Polly began.
His arm stayed around his wife’s waist.
‘A modern day Cinderella, my dear.’ As he went on to explain what had happened and made introductions, his wife’s expression became more sympathetic.
‘So I decided we should have tea while we wait for her shoe to re-emerge. Then perhaps we could drop you off somewhere,’ he said turning to Polly, his expression a picture of gentlemanly courtesy.
‘Well, seeing as me shoe might be in two pieces, I’ll accept yer offer,’ said Polly with a toss of her blonde hair. ‘That’ll get the neighbours talking.’
‘My word,’ said Charlotte with an excitable laugh. ‘I’ve already had tea with Edna and I must warn you that it’s very weak and only lukewarm.’